Seniors invited to take a walk

News-Times, The (Danbury, CT), Robert Miller THE NEWS-TIMES

Published
1:00 am EDT, Thursday, April 22, 2004

DANBURY - Old Quarry is looking for old people. With sensible shoes. Hoping to turn the city's senior citizens into regular visitors to the Old Quarry Nature Center, its director, George Ogno, will lead an Earth Day walk for seniors today at 10 a.m. Walkers should gather at Rogers Park Pond, then ride a bus to the center's main entrance on Mountainville Road. They can also meet at the Elmwood Hall senior center at 9:30 a.m. Ogno said he wants to get the seniors involved because the Old Quarry center is so accessible to them. The center now has an entry point at Rogers Park Pond, so seniors in the downtown area can get to the center without going over to Mountainville Road. It's especially close to the senior housing at Glen Apartments, which is located on the edge of Rogers Park."Come out and take a walk," Ogno said. "It's not difficult terrain and it's a beautiful site." The city has worked hard in recent years to revive the 75-acre nature center, which had fallen into overgrown neglect in the mid-1990s. Students from Henry Abbott Regional Technical High School have helped refurbish its field house, and volunteers join in an annual trail-clearing day in April to give the place a spring cleaning. Ogno, who used to teach at Rogers Park Middle School, is now retired and has the time to serve as the center's director. But because of its previous years of neglect, the forested center isn't as well-known as Ogno would like."I grew up in this town and I didn't realize it was there," said Susan Tomanio, the city's director of elderly services. "It's actually very pretty." Ogno said the new trail entrance at Rogers Park Pond will help everyone in the city because it offers walkers an easy place to park before setting off. He said he is also participating in a network of other nature centers in the region - including Flanders Nature Center in Bethlehem, the Discovery Center in Ridgefield and the White Memorial Foundation in Litchfield - to encourage greater awareness of all these places. Tomanio said the center, as well as the nearby Tarrywile Park, could serve to revive an interest in nature walks for the city's seniors."Lots of seniors take walks in the center of town every day," she said. "I'd love to see more. There used to be a group of seniors in the city that called themselves 'The Wonder Walkers' because each time they got together, they'd wonder where they'd go off to that day." Seniors wanting to join the Earth Day walk at Old Quarry Nature Center should meet at Elmwood Hall, 10 Elmwood Place off Main Street, at 9:30 a.m. or Rogers Park Pond at 10 a.m. For more information, call the city's senior center at (203) 797-4686 or George Ogno at (860) 354-7592. Contact Robert Miller at bmiller@newstimes.com or at (203) 731-3345.